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E3: Ori and the Will of the Wisps announced.

Spoiler alert for Ori and the Blind Forest. Seriously, go play that game.

Microsoft has announced a sequel to Moon Studio’s 2015 hit, Ori and the Blind Forest, at their E3 conference. Ori and the Will of the Wisps will be releasing on Xbox One and Windows 10 but we have no word on its release date as of now.

The first game was a Metroidvania that told the story of Ori, a spirit who set out on a quest to save the forest of Nibel, and a few other recurring characters Ori met along the way. The sequel seems to be set soon after the first game as we get the reveal of the baby owl who is the only surviving child of Kuro, the primary antagonist of the original. Ori and the owl look upon the husks of dead owls in grief as it is presumed that this owl is the last of its race.

Opinion: Ori and the Blind Forest was one of my favourite games of 2015, a year stacked with releases like Bloodborne, The Witcher 3 and Undertale, and is one of the most beautiful, both in terms of visuals and narrative, games I have ever played. I give Microsoft a lot of flak for relying on their three main franchises year after year but I have to give them props for backing this project.

I hope Moon Studios can add some variation to the gameplay in order to keep it from feeling like too much of the same and growing stale. Maybe the owl will be a playable character in addition to Ori and will have completely different mechanics. I could see him/her having a focus on flying and melee combat rather than Ori’s ground based gameplay with range attacks and dashes. I hope we see some gameplay soon.

Just hearing the music of this trailer made me want to revisit the original. This is a day one buy for me.